April 27, 2018

Kevin Dwyer was 42 years old, but his mind and memories were thinking about a different time. He sat by the window drinking his coffee. The tree across the street rustled gently in the breeze, and the clouds floated slowly through the clear blue sky, over the mountains in the distance.
“How is your wife?” His friend asked.
“I don’t love her.” He said calmly watching the steam rise from his coffee mug. “It looks nice outside” he said staring off again longingly into the distance.
“You don’t love your wife?” His friend asked questioningly.
“Love is rare. I have only loved once.” He replied. “It was just after high school. Nothing ever came of it. She got married and moved on with her life. I did the same. But I’ve only ever felt that way for her.” He paused and his friend waited for him to continue. “Sometimes I think back and wonder what I could have done. How it could have been different. But sometimes you can love so strong and it’s just not returned. Sometimes I hope or pray that when we die we just get to live over again. Everyone else oblivious but you’re completely aware. You can fix your mistakes. Because when you’re young you don’t have that knowledge or experience, you don’t know what happened. How can you live right without the training for it. That’s what I want when I die.”
“I had a girl too” the friend said, causing him to look up. “We were high school sweethearts. Dating all the way through. We would always fight and argue. We made mistakes. We were young. I think that naivity made me want more experience. I’d sent photos to other girls and we’d break up, and get back together. She was a huge flirt. Always flirting with all our friend group. She was so pretty. Not like a model. But like the girl next door. But she had such sexual charisma that everyone wanted her. After school we broke up, she hooked up with my best friend. We weren’t together but we were each others rocks. We still hung out and still slept together. She met a guy and they started dating. Soon she cut everyone off. The entire friend group. She just disappeared. Here one day gone the next. Erased herself from our lives. I got pretty messed up after that. A string of bad relationships, drugs. It took me a long time to fix my life. She was such a big part of it to go missing. I still think back on her and those times. I don’t even know what she looks like now. It’s been 22 years. I still miss the conversations. I still miss her.” His voice broke a little as he finished his sentence.
Kevin looked at him. Sipped his coffee and said. “It’s hard. You think about them all the time and you wonder if you’re even important enough to cross their mind. The ghosts of our pasts haunt us, and yet, they’re not ghosts. Because they’re out there living their lives, and we’re the ghosts living in distance memories. Stuck in the past with lost love. I’m sorry for bringing this up. I always dwell on this in Autumn. The warm sun and cool gentle breeze take me to a different time.”
“That’s ok” his friend said “I guess it helps to talk. I haven’t told anyone. It’s hard. The group of friends I had then are all gone. It makes my heart heavy knowing these guys, who you grow up with, share adventures with, who you think will be there forever but are now gone. No one to remember the past with.”
“I don’t know how it all falls apart so fast.” Kevin said finishing off his coffee. “I guess it’s just a moment etched in time. A somber distant memory that blows in on an Autumn breeze to remind these two old men that they’re nothing but ghosts haunting a forgot dream.”
They sat in silence for a while, watching the clouds roll over the mountain, and thought of their pasts.

May 8, 2013

I walk through the white corridors of the shopping mall, feeling all alone as I push my way through the hordes of mindless consumer zombies. Fourteen year old girls dressed like adult porn-stars, I sigh, but my eyes linger. Gross.
I continue walking, their faces fade and I glide past the stains of human-kind. I catch a glimpse of someone. That guy again. I see his fat face and neck beard and he stares, smiling creepily at me as he walks past, every time I see this guy he says hi. I have no idea who the fuck he is. Maybe I went to College with him?
Memories flood back of college, every morning I would awake to the fart alarm, right on time, 7:30 every morning my roommate would fart. She was so thin, so small, I could never believe how she could produce such noises.
I awaken from my flash back and find myself still moving. The neck beard out of sight. I continue my way through the labyrinth of shops. Am I searching for something? Or am I just hoping something will find me.
I see an adult man drift by. Perhaps he is me in the future. Perhaps I never leave this place, perhaps time is distorted and everyone is just an alternate version of me?
I buy a coffee and take a seat.
I take a sip. And then another. God I’m good.
I’m the King. I’m the best.
I finish my coffee. What had I been thinking? My own thought process forgotten to me. I frown, and glance over at the nearby table. A young fat girl stares at me while she eats her chips. I have to move. Her piercing gaze upon me feels like an actual force, pressing against me. I stand up and turn to go the opposite way. I see a beautiful girl standing before me, she smiles. I turn and hurry in a completely different direction.
I have.. uh… well, a problem. I make my own life miserable.
I always fall in love with girls who don’t even know I’m alive. Girls I have no hope with. And it makes my life hell.
I pine over them. Think about them night and day. My mouth feels dry and my stomach queezy when near them. But they’ll never know. I’ll never tell them.
I soon wander into a DVD store. I look at mindless cliche and mind-numbingly dumb entertainment marketed to the grazing masses, the sheep in human clothes.
I find myself staring at a movie. Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones. I’ve never seen it, but I stare at the DVD. I love the word Volcano. It is easily the best word in the entire English language.
Because the first thing that happens when you hear it is you picture a Volcano. A big black mountain lava pouring out the top, black smoke rising from it. Instant visualization. It’s a word that actually is an object. See-able, hear-able, touch-able, smell-able. Secondly it’s not pretentious. It’s not some big long fancy word pretending to be sophisticated. It is what it is. Finally the structure of the word. Volcano, I mean, there’s nothing else that sounds or looks like it.
You’re not going to get it confused and say another word that sounds similar, you’re not going to forget what it’s called, and you’re not going to use any other name to say what it is. It is simply ‘Volcano’ and I think it’s brilliant.
I wander around the store and some girls my age walk by.
I smile to myself. Could destiny be calling? I glance over and see them looking at awful films and even worse shows. I hear them talk about them as if they’re masterpieces. I shed a tear and leave the store continuing my vagrancy around the mall.
Not knowing how long it will take, I hum a tune to myself and slip into the realm of my imagination.

September 26, 2012

There was a shuffling sound, her eyes opened and she looked around the dark room. She couldn’t see him, but there was a coolness in the air, she could sense him staring at her. She reached over and tapped her lamp flooding the room with light and sure enough, there he was, in the corner, head bent, eyes staring intensely at her. If she hadn’t known he was a Vampire it would have been a shocking sight to see a young man standing in the corner of your room in the middle of the night, hunched over, fangs exposed, almost looking like someone with down syndrome.
“You came.” She said, feigning surprise.
“Not yet.” He replied, smirking.
The light of the lamp sparkled in his eyes and made his skin sparkle, as if it was covered in glitter. If she hadn’t known what he was she would have thought he was a gay stripper with down syndrome.
Silently he walked towards her, mysteriously, as if gliding. He brushed her long brown hair out of her eyes.
“You are so sexy.” He said with a lisp.
She tried hard not to laugh, Vampires were known for their fury.
“So are you.”
It wasn’t a lie. Not truly. Probably because he was a Vampire his magical blood oozed with sex appeal, he probably released pheromones, like a bug… that thought repulsed her… and although he was decently ugly, and, well, kind of downy, she couldn’t help but crave to ride him, wildly, like a mechanical bull in a pub, screaming and waving her arms around.
He bent over and sniffed at her neck. It kind of tickled, but he smelt strange, like frozen semen or maybe horse radish.
“You’re making me so wet.” She said.
His fangs extended lightly pressing against her neck, the pressure hurt, but it was a good pain. The sharp tips lightly broke the skin and the Vampire ravishingly licked at the blood. It wasn’t sexy. It was like a Dog licking sloppishly.
She pushed him off and down onto the bed. She’s had enough of that. The Vampire was like any teen boy. Horny. But he had been saving himself for 400 years. She couldn’t imagine the sexual frustration, but he imagined her to be a virgin, that was what she had told him. But the truth was, she was a huge slut. She had once had the entire football team in a 24 hour period, while on her period.
She began unzipping his pants, he was now panting, like a dog.
She began kissing at the bottom of his belly, just above his crotch. Then the noises started. Whining noises, like a dog that begs you to keep scratching.
Finally she went lower, and stuck his frosty penis into her mouth.
It wasn’t like any penis she had tasted before. It wasn’t salty and warm it was cold and bland, like a home brand ice block.
She licked the tip as the Vampire roared like a Lion. Eventually fitting the entire thing into her mouth she lowered, until it went down her throat, lifting her head again, up and down she went, slowly, and building faster.
The Vampire’s body shook, like he was a giant vibrator.
Faster, faster she went. The room was filled with slopping and gagging noises.
Slowly a long thunderous sound built within the Vampire, releasing a cracking sound like lightning, and the cum erupted from the Vampire’s penis exploding out the back of the girls head.
Pieces of her brain and skull stuck to the roof, soaked with cum. The Vampire sat, wide eyed in shock as he looked at the tip of his penis still oozing cum over the back of the girls head, mixing with the blood. It only made him more hard.
Suddenly the young girls Ghost appeared looking down over her body and exploded head. A piece of brain and cum dripping from the ceiling falling right through her.
“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME!” She screamed.
“Surprise?” He said and began to eat her brain out the back of her head as if it were watermelon.

July 4, 2012

He wandered back and forth across the room, focused, staring.
“Why?” he thought. “Why am I suddenly so attracted to the rug?”
It was more than an attraction. A sudden urge had overcome him. He wanted to have sex with the rug. It was more than bizarre, it was preposterous. But the thought had taken hold in his mind. His body craved to rough it up and down the rug.
But he couldn’t understand why, and so he paced, back and forth across the room. Fighting the urge to rip off his clothes and feel bliss against the rug.
“It’s just a rug!” He screamed in frustration.
He laid belly down across the carpet and stared at the rug. He could smell it.
His senses went wild. It was the smell of everything he loved. Wild berries, a cool breeze, morphing, becoming a warm breeze with the smell of sweet cherry pie. He could almost taste the sugar.
He stretched across and licked the rug.
It was like licking a strawberry.
He began munching into it. The sweet juices flowed and filled his mouth. The sheer awesome flavour filling him with insatiable sexual desires, he licked and licked and the sweet strawberry juices dampened his face.
Her eyes opened. Jewel had woken up. What a strange dream.
She looked over at her boyfriend asleep next to her. She felt numb.
She thought back over her dream, her thighs shook and she felt moist.
The dream had brought around a realisation. Something she had never even considered.
“I’m a Lesbian.” She said, and smiled for the first time in a long time.

May 1, 2012

I was Eight years old when I first learnt the truth about the Forest…
I was young, full of energy, always off exploring… no one ever went near the Forest, I had never known why. One day I ventured too close, and a voice called out to me.
“Boy!” Said the ancient voice, like carving the words into the bark of a tree.
I turned and saw the Old Crone, clothed in a grey hooded cloak, her face ancient and wooden, with a long pointed nose with a hideous wart bulging on the end, one eye and the other nothing more than a huge scar, teeth missing from her mouth she waddled up to me and stared down upon me.
“You don’t want to get too close to that Forest,” she croaked. “Not yet anyway.”
She smiled it was the sort of smile at that age you didn’t fully understand, but it scared you anyway.
“No, no,” she said. “Do you know the story of the Forest, boy?”
I looked towards the vast Forest, the thousands of trees stretching out into forever, Birch and Yew trees as far as the eye could see, a few Oaks spotted, and I knew following the river in the entire river was lined with Willows.
I was standing under a Hawthorn near a little pond a short distance from the tree line, I knew adult ceremonies took place here but at that age I didn’t understand them.
“No.” I whispered, shy around this Old Crone.
“Thousands of years ago,” She said, power growing in her voice. “There was an ancient war. Men fought Men over the Gods, each Man fighting for the God they believed to be right. Thousands upon thousands died. Then Men who buried the dead waited, until the blood in their bodies no longer flowed like a river, but dried. A hole was cut through their stomach, and when they were buried trees were planted inside them. Years past and the war was devastating, soon Men forgot exactly what they were fighting for, only remembering how to bury their dead, the world was decimated and thousands of years have past since then. All these trees boy? They are the dead. That Forest is a vast Graveyard stretching on forever; those trees contain the souls of our ancestors.”
I looked deep into the heart of the Woods, it was still, almost like they knew their story was being told, as if they were listening.
Suddenly her hands were on my shoulders holding me, looking right into my face with her one eye.
“The Trees are alive boy!” She cried. “Some of the trees are the fallen of the wrong Men, these trees are evil, and wish you dead!”
I ran, far away from the Crone and the Forest, and hid in the stable by my families Cow, Betsy.
That night around the dinner table with my Mother and Father enjoying Duck cooked with lemon and honey, I told them what the Crone had said.
“Magda is old,” My Father told me. “Some says she is hundreds of years old, the last in the line of her family, all who lived unnaturally long lives.”
He told Me they were the keepers of the story, telling generation after generation the legends and history of the Forest.
“You need to know about that Forest, Son.” My Father told me, his voice solemn. “When a Boy comes of age, he must go into the Forest on his own, he must try to survive out on his own, as long as he can, and if he can, he must try to make it to the other side of the Forest.
“Has anyone ever done that?” I ask with intense curiosity.
“No. Within the Forest lie dangers unimaginable. There are more than Wolves in there, Son.”
Wolves sometimes ventured out of the Woods, hunting Chickens or Ducks. Sometimes, they ate small children who’d wandered off on their own. There was a group of men, who had lasted long or survived well at their trials in the Forest, they protected us from the Wolves, sometimes going into the Woods to hunt when food was scarce. They were the keepers of the Old Way. Each had spent time with the Old Crone, learning the stories intensely. When Winter came, and wood was needed for fires, they would go into the Woods searching for the evil trees. But sometimes they could not be found, or they hid well. The Old Crone had taught them the words to the prayers needed to be said to cut down a tree. The words were in an ancient tongue, that only the trees and the wind understood. They gave the tree peace so we could use its wood. So its soul could give us warmth.
My Father removed his shirt. There was a huge scar running down his back. I had seen him without his shirt before, when he was working at making instruments for protection for the Guardians, and I had always wondered about the scar. I had never asked.
“This scar,” he said “Came from a creature 6 times the size of any Wolf. It was creature that roared, big and mean, with shaggy brown fur. There are creatures in those Woods, Son. Monsters.”
I remember sitting there, the wind howling outside my windows, I remember imagining the beast my Father spoke of. I imagined evil glowing red eyes in the dark, stalking me as I stumbled through the Birch trees in a howling Winter’s night. My heart was racing, even at the table, by the warmth of the fire.
“Magda knows, all the children in her family, even the girls must go through the trial when they come of age.” My Mother cut in. “Magda lasted the longest of any known person. Four Winter’s they say she lasted, determined to make in through the Forest. On her second Winter, cold and hungry knowing only death would come if she kept going, she turned back. She stumbled out of those Woods delirious, muttering, starved and near death. She is the wisest and most learned person in this village.”
The hut fell silent, and we resumed eating our dinner, my thoughts plagued with images moving in the dark, of the Old Crone as a young girl sitting in the snow by a fire, freezing to death, fearing that when my time came I would scarcely last… or I would perish.
For years I kept an eye on the Old Woman, listened in when I heard her speaking to others. Sometimes she spoke to the trees. I wondered if they spoke back to her. If they did, I couldn’t hear them. But she talked to them like old friends, had conversations. Her face was like the crinkled bark of a tree. Sometimes I wondered that she’d spent so long among them she was becoming one.
When I could I spent us much time near the tree-line as possible, staring in. I watched the Guardians fight when the occasional wolf came to steal a chicken. I practised the movements they used with a long stick. My coming of age was close approaching. I’d need all the knowledge I could get. I had become determined… infatuated with the idea of making it through the Forest. I dreamed of what lie on the other-side. For me it was always some kind of paradise. Warmth, and a treeless clearing stretching for miles. Hills of grass as far as the eye could see.

Finally a new year dawned. All the children who were to come of age travelled a mile in the opposite direction of the thick labyrinthine Forest, here trees grew sparsely. I saw ponds of Geese. Cats and Dogs running about, and a larger village built on the side of a wide river. I could not see the other side, but men on small wooden boats sat in the still river holding sticks with lines entering the water. I knew what they were doing. My Father had often spoken of fishing as a child. This was the village he had came from, he had moved closer to the Forest when he returned injured from his trail the huge cut on his back. My Mother had nursed him back to health. That was what she did, she knew medicines, she knew what herbs and plants were used to help the sick. Even Old Crone came to my Mother when she was younger, they had learned together for a bit, learning the way of the herbs, when Old Crone has learned what she needed she walked off into the Woods. She came back weeks later with vast supplies of Mushrooms and other plants that my mother could use. Even teaching my Mother knew things. She truly was the wisest of the village.
When my Father was nursed back to health, a feat that had seemed impossible, he began courting my Mother, marrying her under the Hawthorn. He hadn’t left since.
“Do you see it!?” A boy called out next to me, he was a boy from a village nearer ours than this, still along the tree line.
I looked where he was pointing. Towards the middle of the village was a huge Oaken Citadel, built hundreds of years ago. Craved into the wood of the halls where pictures of the Forest, and some of the strange creatures inside it. I saw Wolves, and the large monstrous creature my Father spoke of. I saw pictures of Butterflies and other creatures I was familiar with. The Forest truly was a wild place.
When I and the other boys had all sat down inside the huge citadel a voice called out.
“Men. That’s what you will become this year. Each one of you will pit yourself against the wild of the Forest. Those of you that survive will come back men, and be assigned a post based of how well you did.”
I see the Old Crone walk up behind him, hunched and hooded in the same grey cloak.
“Magda will provide you with a week of training with her before you venture into the woods.”
He pulled out a piece of parchment, something Old Crones family line had passed down how to make through the generations.
“On this list is the order your days of birth. The order of which, you will enter the Forest. I will call the names out, but first enjoy your coming of age feast!”
Women come out dressed in beautiful green gowns. They are our age, and I imagine they set this up as a way for us to find pairs. The place beautiful clay plates with swirling carves cut into them in front of us, with a beautiful dark meat, dripping with flavour, a side of cooked river fruit, and a goblet filled with red liquid. I’ve seen the liquid before. My Father had drunk it on oft occasions. But we were to be Men, now we could drink it.
I bite in to the meat, it’s succulent and juicy I can taste that is has been flavoured with garlic, and something else I can’t put my finger on.
I finish a mouth full and wash it down with the Wine my Father had forbidden me from drinking. It was rare he had said, and difficult to make, until Summer.
It was beautiful. Sweet and made Me feel dizzy, but happy, like I could do anything. I knew the flavour on the meat now. It was wine.
The feast felt like hours, as we drank ourselves into a stupor. Some boys ending kissing the serving girls. The man came through, eyeing people off with his stern face and big grey beard, telling them it was time to be quiet and to sit down, I finished off my tenth goblet of wine by the time the halls were silent.
“When I call your name I want you to walk up those stairs to the right, and young Saiben will lead you to your sleeping chamber for the night.”
He unrolled the parchment and cleared his throat.
“Rose of Hazelton”
Whispers filled the hall, all of us looking around. A young red head with short boyish hair walked past me, dressed in boys clothes. Looking at her face I saw she was a girl, and seeing her body shape, it was obvious. But girls don’t do the trial. Only Magda’s family line. And she was the last. As the girl vanished up the stairs silence filled the hall, eagerly awaiting an explanation. None was given. The man called out the next name.
“Euan of Hawthorn”

It was me, stumbling to my feet due to the wine, I steadied myself and walked as straight as I could to, and up the stairs as a young man lead me to my chamber. Beyond the burnt black door was a small fire, a small wooden table with two chairs, and two beds on opposite sides of the room. On the bed, on the right hand side of the room, sat the red haired Rose, her beautiful white face sullen looking.
“I didn’t think they’d make me share a room.” She said, spite in her voice.
“Sorry.” I responded and dumped my clothes at the end of my bed.
I was too tired to talk. I wanted to sleep.
My dreams where strange that night. Normally your dreams are forgotten, but I remember those dreams.
I was by a pond, reeds surrounded it, I moved them aside, looking down in the pond, the water moved like a flowing river, slowing down and stopping, changing and become a complete reflection, I saw myself and heard the sound of Ravens I looked around me and saw only trees, looking back to the pond there was nothing there, just snow, snow and trees all around me, and the crying of Ravens. I looked around the birch trees and snow fell and melted on my naked flesh. And still the Ravens cried. Darkness was falling. I ran, naked and cold through the forest, falling face first into the snow as darkness fell, I huddled against a tree for warmth. Still the ravens cried. “Help!” I screamed. “Somebody please help!” I heard a blood curdling laughter from behind and jumped up to see the face of the Old Crone reaching out from the tree.
“No help will come.” She mocked. “Only death comes in Winter!” She burst into a fit of laughter and I ran.
Running as fast and far as my legs would take me, my body freezing from the cold. Seeing a small rocky cave I hid myself inside.
“The trees are alive!” I hear the Old Crone call out. “Alive and hungry for souls!” She calls.
I cried and the tears froze on my face. Dying of the cold, my naked body huddled against a wall.
“Here.” I hear a voice say, and look up. It’s Rose, she’s coming towards Me, dressed in the fine green dresses of the serving girls. “Let me warm you.” She says removing her dress and pressing her naked body against mine. My body heats up in a way it’s never done before. And the laughing of the crone changes into the cracking of a fire in the cave, and the Ravens crying silences to the gentle buzz of Summer bees. The warmth of Rose against me is heavenly and she moves her hands through my brown hair. My green eyes gazing into hers, I look at her soft milky skin and fiery red hair.
I get a feeling of intense warmth and dizziness, before I wake up.

January 11, 2012

The Gods, they whisper to me.
Sweet serenades, seducing my soul into sempiternal slumber.
Silently the world fades to the efflorescence beat of the Gods’ hearts.
I awaken to the burning of my abode. The Gods lullaby, ephemeral.
I hear the screams of the Wood-Folk as the barbarians attack.
The glamour of the God-Song ended. Ineffable beauty never to be heard as the men with steel-arms burn our homes.
We conflate together as we are surrounded. The children cry as the men of steel spit and sneer.
Denouement received as I awaken from my nightmare.
Harbinger of the God vision, I inform my brothers and sisters of the Oncoming Storm.
We flee through the thick labyrinthine forest.
Hearts in our throats, we say goodbye to the Gods, to our homes, and to our lives.

December 3, 2011

The man leaned over.
He was fat, moustached and red faced.
His body wobbled and flobbed like the tides of the ocean.
His rolls jiggled and collided like continents.
Mountains of fat burst from orifices they hadn’t been before.
A loud sound built and grew throughout his body as he emitted a slight noise from his lips: ‘Eeeeeee’
Suddenly like the crack of lightning he released a thunderous fart, shock waves vibrating through his whole body, shattering his spine as he fell to the ground in a mass of fat and skin, melted down like a pancake, he covered the floor.
‘Eeeee’ he said.
Finally his last breath left him.
He had died.
A tragic spine shattering death that smelt strangely like honey.

MEANWHILE

In another part of the world, a butterfly flapped it’s wings, producing a small gust of wind that moved a small fleck of dust that moved a bigger fleck that started a chain reaction causing harsh winds 300 kilometres away, causing a airport to have delays, delaying the plane that would arrive at another part of the world causing a man to break his wait and sit down at a restaurant and eat dangerously hot chilli that would release his bowels that would release his wind, that would break his spine.